He was afraid she thought he had abandoned her. That thought haunted 91-year-old Duane Mann for 70 years.And he thought his first love Peggy Yamaguchi had given up on him.
Despite, this he never gave up hope and continued to search for his lost love.But she never actually gave up on him first.He later learned that his mother’s racism led her to destroy the letters Yamaguchi had written him.Mann was 22 when met Yamaguchi in Yokosuka, Japan in 1954 when stationed there with the Navy.Just after the couple found out they were going to have a child, the Navy sent Mann back to the U.S.
Mann had planned on returning to Japan as soon as possible so that he could marry Yamaguchi.However, Mann’s father ended up spending all of Mann’s savings.
So, when Mann returned home from the Koren war he didn’t have the money to fly back to Japan.
Then the letters from Yamaguchi stopped coming.
Little did Man know that his mother was burning them. She didn’t want him to marry a Japanese girl.
But one last letter did come saying that Yamaguchi lost their baby and she had already married another.
“It was over, it set in that idea that I abandoned her, just wore me out,” Mann told KETV. “That’s not an honorable thing to do.”
But Mann never forgot about Yamaguchi over the years.
Eventually, he enlisted his son to help him track her down.
Mann assumed that his lost love was overseas in Japan.